Origins
by colormetheworld
Summary: Crossover between R&I and FBI, where Maggie Bell is adopted and goes searching for her birth parents. Dunno, couldn't get it out of my head.


Maine is a long haul from Manhattan, especially on only the whisper of a lead. But Maggie packs a bag and makes the trip anyway, singing along to classic rock and early indie until her voice goes hoarse.

The lead, if you could call it that, came from the uncle of a friend's friend's dad, and so when she tells her captain she's taking a couple of personal days, she plays down the hope she feels creeping up the back of her neck.

"You still hoping to find your folks?" He'd asked her. "This to do with that?"

"Yeah," she says. "I mean, I got folks, I wouldn't forget that...I'm just looking for my blood."

He snorts but approves her days. "Anyone gives you up, Bell, and they shouldn't have the right to call you blood."

She'd made a face she hoped conveyed gratefulness and headed out the door.

Now, she pulls off of the Maine road onto a narrow country one that winds away into the woods. Caution tempers anticipation.

The worn paper of an envelope. The end of a letter with the previous pages nowhere in sight. "thank you for the last picture of Margaret. It seems like yesterday she was learning to read...FBI. Jane would be thrilled. Horrified...  
Both.

It had felt like fate, standing there in that attic, tasked with cleaning out the boxes left by the old cop who'd passed away. She'd shown the envelope to her friend, and he'd shown it to his dad, but it hadn't brought back a lot of information.

Dunno, Mags. My Dad said his uncle was a cop in Boston for a long time. Detective in Homicide. But he doesn't recognize the letter or the address.

She goes anyway, following her phone to the edge of the state, to a massive house on the water, a view of the ocean from the windows.

It's mid-morning on a Tuesday, but there's a car in the driveway, and as Maggie steps out of her own car, a great, shaggy dog stands on the front porch and barks twice.

For a second, the dog and the woman just look at each other, and then the door of the house opens and a woman steps onto the porch.

She is older, mid to late 60s, and her hair is dark blonde streaked with grey and white. She's dressed in a rich, casual way: linen pants, long sleeve shirt, and a warm looking shawl, and she addresses the dog like she would a child.

"What is it, Cagney, hmm? Barking at the wind again?"

And then she looks up, and Maggie meets her eyes.

She doesn't realize she's walking forward until the gravel of the driveway crunches underneath her feet. The woman stands on the porch and watches her come, eyes never leaving her face.

When they are less than five feet apart, Maggie opens her mouth, trying to think of something to say.

The woman speaks first. "You should have worn something warmer," she says lightly.

"It's May," Maggie says automatically, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. "The city was warm."

The other woman smiles, beckoning her up the stairs. "This is not New York," she responds. She sounds a bit teasing. "Come in. We'll worry about your bags later."

Maggie does as she's told, all thoughts of caution gone now. This woman was expecting her. Was waiting for her. There is no reason to be afraid.

The house is warm and bright and furnished like the inside of an Architectural Digest. Maggie follows the woman along the hallway and into a sunlit kitchen.

"What do you drink?" she asks. "I just put coffee on."

Maggie blinks at her hosts back. "Sorry," she says after a moment. "You're...you seem to be a little - a lot - ahead of me...Who are you?"

The woman turns, smiling wide. "My name is Maura Isles," she says. "I gave birth to you, darling."

The words nearly knock Maggie off her feet. She staggers backward a little under the weight of this revelation.

"You're...my...you...You're my um...mother?"

Maura nods. "One of them. Yes." She gestures to the stool in front of the breakfast bar. "Come on, sit. Have some coffee. I assume you take cream."

Maggie obeys, feet numb. She accepts the coffee but doesn't feel it in her hands. "I...um...what do you mean one of them?" she asks.

Maura's smile dims around the corners, just the smallest amount. "My wife, Jane, she donated her egg, and I carried to term. She's your mother too, and I have to say..." Maura's eyes search Maggie's face for a long second. "You look...so like her."

Maggie opens her mouth. Shuts it again. This is too much. It is too much.

She came, expecting another lead. Another thread that she had to pull that would eventually lead her nowhere. Now here she is, sitting across from the woman who...the...

"Is she dead?" Maggie isn't aware that she's asking the questions until they're tumbling out of her mouth. "Why did you give me away? Did my other mother die? Who is my father? Did you know a guy named Vince Korsak? Did you write to him about me?"

Maura puts her hand up to halt the questions. She shakes her head. "Jane is not dead," she says. "You can meet her if you like, though I'll have to explain before you do."

Maggie looks down into her coffee. For some reason, she feels like crying.

"And yes, I did know Vince. We did write. He kept an eye on you for us...I was very sad to hear he passed."

Silence. Maggie listens to the ticking of the clock.

"You gave me away," she says when she can speak around the lump in her throat.

"We did," Maura says gently. "It was a horrible, horrible choice to have to make. It was almost Jane's undoing, watching you go."

"Then...why?" Maggie asks. She looks up into Maura's watery hazel eyes.

Maura sighs heavily. "Because you were very little, and she was in a lot of danger. It was a case; her last one, it turned out. And you'd just turned one. We caught a murder that turned into four overnight. It-"

"We?" Maggie can't help interrupting. "You're cops? like me?"

"Jane was a detective," Maura says with a smile not quite in the present. "I'm a doctor. A Medical Examiner."

She waits to see if Maggie has more questions, and then goes on. "They were brutal, the murderers. They were...ill. And they threatened you." Maura looks away, out of a window. "The short story is that they threatened you, and we made the decision to send you somewhere safe until they were caught."

Maggie's grip on the mug is so tight she's surprised it doesn't break. "Did you and - Did you catch them? You and Jane?"

Maura looks back at her, though for a long minute she is still very clearly in the past.

"Yes," she says finally. "But it took the better part of four years and almost all of Jane. She was in the hospital for months. She lost a lot of..." Maura pauses, then seems to give up whatever she'd been attempting.

"She had brain damage," she says. "Along with the physical trauma. The pain scared her. She couldn't comprehend it."

Maura reaches out and gently unlinks Maggie's hands. She hadn't been aware she was twisting them together.

"You didn't know us," she says softly. "You spent a week with us and you cried and cried. Do you remember?"

Maggie shakes her head.

"It tore Jane apart. It tore me apart. Every night you cried for your mother. For your brother." Maura touches a finger to the corner of her eye. "You had a _brother_. I knew, even if you began to love us, we could never give you a sibling...So I sent you home," she says simply. "How could I not?"

A tear drips down Maggie's cheek and she wipes it away angrily. She doesn't speak, and Maura doesn't press her. She gets her own cup of coffee and sits down across the breakfast bar.

Maggie takes a sip of her coffee. It is made just the way she likes it.

"I love my mom and dad," she says when half of her mug is gone.

Maura looks up. "Good," she says sincerely.

"I didn't come looking because I was unhappy. Just because I...I wanted…" she trails off. Trying to think of the right words to say.

"You know," Maura says softly, "when I was an infant, my biological father had to make a similar choice for me. And though I was never mistreated, it was hard for me to rest until I knew where I'd come from. Where I'd _really_ come from."

Maggie looks at the woman across from her, wide-eyed. She wonders, briefly, what it might have been like to be her daughter.

"Was I a big baby?" she hears herself ask.

Maura laughs. "The opposite. 5lbs, 7oz. So small Jane used to worry she'd set you down and lose you."

And Maggie laughs too.

She asks for more coffee.

….

….

Jane Rizzoli's hair is still mostly dark brown, though Maggie can see wisps of white peeking out from around the curls. Her biological mom is sitting on a blanket, facing the ocean, and as she draws nearer Maggie can see what Maura means about their resemblance.

She would know this woman anywhere. In any crowd.

She picks her way across the lawn, approaching from the left, so that Jane will be able to see her.

" _She's not dangerous, or volitile," Maura had said as they stood watching the figure from the porch. "She's just...she spent 94 days in that bunker with that monster. She's just...gone now."_

Maggie sits down on the edge of the blanket, very slowly.

" _Don't talk about your cases. Don't talk about strong emotion. Don't ask her if her scars hurt. They do, and she ignores it."_

Jane's head turns slightly to take her in. Maggie looks back, doing the same. They have the same eyes, though one of Jane's is now frosted and unseeing.

They have the same chin.

"Hey," Jane says, looking back down into her lap.

The pitch of their voice is the same.

"Hey," Maggie says.

"You're not Frost," Jane says. "Sometimes Frost comes out for a couple days. When he can't take Boston anymore."

"Oh," Maggie says. "No. I'm not...sorry," she adds at the end.

"You're a cop, though," Jane says with another sidelong glance in Maggie's direction. "You hold yourself like a cop."

Maggie smiles. For some reason, this statement fills her with pride. For some reason, the fact that Jane recognizes this about her is better than anything.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm in the FBI."

Jane's face crinkles into a grimace. "Nosy parkers," she says, though this seems to be all bravado. "BPD was always good enough."

Maggie smiles. She has just realized that she _talks_ like her mother.

"Yeah," she says.

For a while, they just sit there. Jane is braiding thin pieces of grass together, into a delicate, intricate braid. Maggie watches her long fingers move back and forth, working methodically and without ceasing.

"Maura," Jane says quietly.

"I'm here."

Maggie jumps. She hadn't heard the other woman approach. Jane had, though, or maybe she'd just felt her there.

"I brought you both something heavier to wear," Maura says, holding out two sweatshirts. "If you're going to stay out."

"S'practically summer," Jane says, taking the sweatshirt. "I might go to the creek with Frankie."

If this impossible idea throws Maura, Maggie doesn't see her show it.

"That sounds nice, love," the doctor says. "Can I sit with you?"

Jane nods, and Maura sits on her other side, wrapping the shawl more tightly around herself.

Maggie doesn't know what makes her do it. She will spend the rest of the drive home trying to pin down her motive.

She reaches out her hands and takes one of Jane's, pressing the palm between her own. Pulling it up to her forehead.

Jane goes very still, but she makes no move to pull away.

"Mom?" Maggie whispers to Jane's fingers. "Ma?"

Slowly, Jane pulls her hand away from Maggie's. She reaches out and fingers some of her hair, curling a bit of it around her finger.

"Use Pantene," she says in her gravelly voice. "The kind for thick, curly hair like ours. None of that Fructis shit. K?"

Maggie didn't realize she was choked up until she laughs. "K," she says.

Jane nods. She leans toward Maura, who kisses her temple. "Love has four letters," she says. "Four letters, Maura."

Maura smiles. "Four letters, my love."

"Four letters, Not-Frost." Jane tilts her head in Maggie's direction. Addressing her.

Maggie twists her hands together without realizing she's doing it. Next time she comes, she'll introduce herself.

"Four letters, Jane."


End file.
